The Heart of Haiku (Kindle Single)

In seventeenth-century Japan, the wandering poet Basho developed haiku, a seventeen-syllable poetic form now perhaps the most widely written type of poetry in the world. Haiku are practiced by poets, lovers, and schoolchildren, by “political haiku” twitterers, by anyone who has the desire to pin preception and experience into a few quick phrases. This essay offers readers unparalleled insight into the living heart of haiku—how haiku work and what they hold, and how to read through and into their images to find a full expression of human life and perceptions, sometimes profound, sometimes playful.

Jane Hirshfield is an award-winning poet and author of the now-classic Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, as well as an equally classic book introducing earlier Japanese poetry, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Komachi and Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Japanese Court.